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TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
125 ‘Years
—
Wednesday, October 3,
Tradition Bound by Spirit
THE BATTALIO'i
f ^ : " . .. ;
1 Abroad at Pointe
f du Hoc and back
home at A&M,
; James Earl
Rudder built a
legacy of courage
$ and vision
Rudder’s
#
BATTLES
STORY BY ROI.ANDO GARCIA
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AGG1ELAND
Far left: James Earl Rudder played a pivo!:
role in the D-Day invasion at Pointe du
! making him one of A&M's most heralded*
j heroes.
Left: Rudder speaks to Malcolm HaM
dent body president, in 1962. Back at Tea
A&M, Rudder stood strong by his vision I
admit women to the University and to mafc
the Corps non-compulsory.
When James Earl Rudder took the
•helm of the Agricultural and
TVIechanical College of Texas in 1959, it
was an all-male military school with an
enrollment of 7,000 students, most of
Whom were in the Corps of Cadets.
When Rudder died 10 years later, the
small, agrarian school had become
Texas A&M University, a coed institu
tion of more than 15,000 students —
Only a fifth of whom were cadets —
well on its way to becoming a world-
dlass university offering an array of aca
demic and research programs.
The transformation A&M under
went during the 1960s was not an
accident but the result of Rudder’s
Vision of a great university anchored
in its traditions and his courage to
Tmplement unpopular reforms, said
Uohn Adams Jr., Class of 1973. Adams
•has written three books on A&M’s
Ihistory, including Keepers of the
'Spirit which documents the 125-year
•history of the Corps of Cadets.
* “He played the leading role, and he
-was the only person who could do
’this,” Adams said. “He was an Aggie
and a war hero, and he understood that
A&M had to change.”
When Rudder arrived in College
Station in 1958 to become A&M’s
vice president, he had little experi
ence in higher education but an
impressive background. Rudder
played center on the A&M football
team and graduated in 1932.
Rudder, an officer in the Army
Reserve, was called to active duty in
1941 and organized the Second
Ranger Battalion in 1943 and com
manded a pre-invasion D-Day mis
sion at Omaha Beach to silence the
German guns at the top of the hun
dred-foot cliffs at Normandy’s
Pointe du Hoc. One of the most her
alded war heroes in A&M’s history.
Rudder received the Distinguished
Service Cross, Legion of Merit,
Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and the
Purple Heart.
At the beginning of a turbulent
decade that would bring about many
far-reaching reforms, A&M was facing
sagging enrollment numbers, low
retention rates and a conflict of visions.
Adams said, between those deter
mined to keep A&M a small, all
male, agrarian school and those
who believed A&M was on the
fast-track to irrelevance unless it
grew and expanded its scope
beyond the Corps.
The two most controversial reforms
were admitting women and making
membership in the Corps voluntary,
both of which strongly were opposed by
Aggie traditionalists.
“He (Rudder) had very vocal opposi
tion from alumni, the Board of
Directors and A&M Mothers Clubs. All
of these groups were extremely conser
vative and traditionalist and were resist
ant to change,” Adams said. “They told
him that he was ruining the school and
that ‘old Army had gone to hell.’”
Rudder was loudly booed at a
meeting of all cadets as he attempted
to explain the impact of allowing
women into A&M. But despite
intense opposition, the Board voted in
1963 to open enrollment to women
after Board chairman Sterling C.
Evans hastily convened a meeting.
HIHHI
when he knew key opponents would
not be able to attend, Adams said.
However, women did not begin to
enroll in large numbers or become a
part of campus life until 1972, when
female dorms opened, Adams said.
Opening the school to women and
making the Corps non-compulsory
were just part of Rudder’s far-reaching
reforms that included a building con
struction frenzy that would transform
the campus, expansion of graduate and
research programs and a greater
emphasis on academics.
“It wasn’t just about letting girls in,
that just happened to be the lightning
rod,” Adams said. “They (opponents)
were afraid that all these changes
would destroy the bedrock traditions
and culture that made A&M different
from other schools.”
Rudder’s greatest legacy, Adams
said, is being able to initiate ik
reforms A&M needed without tossiij
aside the traditions and culture tta
made A&M unique.
“Rudder was a stabilizing fa*
and he ensured that we wouldm
throw the baby out with the bathwatti
and jettison all the things that mak
A&M different from every otk
school,” Adams said. “As an Aggie.l*
understood tradition and he knewttoi
students didn’t come to A&Mjustfot
a diploma.”
Eddie Davis, Class of 1967 andpres
idem of the Texas A&M Foundatiot
,said Rudder’s vision and couragesawi
A&M from stagnation and irrelevae
“The institution was dying.li^
a small, all-male military school,^
the world around it was changing
Unless you were a kid withoutnuick
money, or you had some family con
nections, A&M didn’t have roudi
appeal,” Davis said. “Those change
have helped make A&M what it is
today, and only Rudder, an Aggieand
a war hero, could have done it."
iWomen, minorities changed face of A&M
By Elizabeth Raines
THE BATTALION
' A headline from a July 2, 1927 article of The
\Bryan-College Station Eagle titled “8 states and 2
‘nations are represented in the Student Body at
»A&M College this Summer” is evidence of how
Ifar Texas A&M University has come in diversify
ing itself in the last 125 years.
• When the University opened its doors in
*1876, officially, only white males were
•allowed to attend. It took 87 years for Texas
lA&M to integrate both by gender and color.
Introducing the Texas A&M® Cadet Nutcraker Series
by College Station artist
5
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Nadine Stuth. The Officer of
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O'
the Day TM is available at
the Texacats booth
during the Memorial
Student Center Hospitality
Committee’s Craft Fair
(Nov. 29th-30th) and online at
Ag glreLa ndG i fts
which happened in 1963.
John Adams Jr., Class of 1973 and author of
three books on Texas A&M’s history, said there
was not nearly as much resistance to the integra
tion of African-Americans as there was to women.
“The biggest [problems] were bringing women
to A&M,” Adams said. “There was much more
excitement over that. The issue of blacks was
much ado about nothing.”
Adams said that even the Texas A&M Mother’s
Clubs were against women attending A&M. He
said everyone kept wanting to know “why do they
need to come here when there are other schools
that they can go to?”
Suanne Pledger in Heidi Ann
Knippa’s thesis “Salvation of a
University: Admissions of
Women to Texas A&M,” recalled
that the first year females were
present on campus that they were
met with hostility from the stu
dent population and certain por
tions of the faculty.
“For the first time, I knew
what people [felt] when they
[were] considered as having the
wrong color or nationality,”
Pledger said.
Knippa said women at A&M
encountered an unwelcome
environment in the 1960s. She
said that, in the beginning, the
University did not provide cam
pus housing for women or an
adequate amount of women’s
restrooms.
Women were accepted into
A&M on a limited basis in 1963,
and full admission of women
began in 1971. The Corps of
Cadets allowed women to join in
1974.
The University began accept
ing African-American students in
1963. Three African-American
students enrolled in A&M sum
mer school programs as “special
students” in the summer of 1963.
In 1964, five African-American
freshman became the first to join
the Corps of Cadets. In 1967,
Charles Dixon Jr. became the
first African-American to gradu
ate from Texas A&M. Fred
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McClure became the first African-American to
become student body president in 1976, one hun
dred years after the University opened.
Although male international students were
attending Texas A&M before either women or
African-Americans could attend, their enrollment
steadily has increased since Texas A&M began.
According to university archives, 43 international
students attended A&M in 1954, 546 in 1965, 968
in 1974 and 1,988 in 1996.
Adams said when he attended A&M, nobody
paid much attention to the diversification of the
University.
“We never thought of it as diversity,” Adams
said. “Things moved on. Life was fine.”
Texas A&M University President Dr. Ray M.
Bowen said the University is inadequate when it
comes to minority enrollment.
Dr. Frank Ashley, Director of Texas A&M
Admissions, said the current minority enrollment
is not up to A&M standards.
“I think that a lot of people still have percep
tions that everyone here is in the Corps of Cadets
and that there are hardly any minorities here at
all,” Ashley said. “One thing we are trying
to do is change that perception.”
Ashley said he tells potential minority
students and families to come to Texas
A&M and see if it is the place for them
“Being a minority myself, I will tell
kids that A&M is not for everyone
but to come and see for yourself if
it is the place for you,” Ashley
said.” If we can get the kids on
campus, we will capture them, and
they’ll come to A&M.”
Both Bowen and Ashley
cited the Hopwood v.
University of Texas decision
of 1996, that struck down
affirmative action at the uni
versity level as one of the
reasons for the still low
minority numbers.
“I think that Hopwood
created a big obstacle for us
at Texas A&M,” Ashley said.
“Hopwood limited a lot of
the financial resources that
were available for minority
students.”
Ashley said that although
A&M’s minority enrollment
took a “nose dive” after the
Hopwood decision, the minority enrollment
bers are slowly going back up.
“We are in a recovery period now,”Ashleysaii
“We were doing good in the early 1990s; my
in admissions is to surpass what we did."
Ashley added that although the top ten percent
rule is in place to help increase minority enroll
ment, it is not dealing with the financial problems
that they are running into. Ashley said the problem
does not lie in students being admitted to Texas
A&M but in getting them to attend.
“The top ten percent rule gets kids accepted
but because the financial aspect is missing,
dents are choosing to attend other universities out
of the state,” Ashley said. “My dream as directot
of admissions is that the student population hereal
Texas A&M would reflect that of the state of
Texas population,” Ashley said.
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